Former Pakistan Supreme Court Chief Justice Wants Reinstatement

Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry was chief justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court when President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution and removed Chuadhry and the other justices from office. At that time they were put under house arrest and their positions were filled by hand picked justices by Musharraf who feared the previous court composition was about to rule that his recent reelection as President of Pakistan was not legal.

With the recent results of the parliamentary elections in Pakistan, the PPL (Bhutto) party and the PML-N (Sharif) party won a majority and were successful in electing their candidate for prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. One of the first moves of the new prime minister was to free the former justices from house arrest. This move was not contested by Musharraf.

Now Chaudhry is calling for reinstatement while both Zardari (Bhutto) and Sharif are cautioning him as to making demands of the new majority. They are concerned as to what the reaction will be from Musharraf if they take this action and reinstate the justices. This will be interesting to follow for the removal of the supreme court justices by Musharraf sparked a lawyers movement in opposition to the Musharraf regime. Many of these lawyers were imprisoned by Musharraf when he suspended the constitution and imposed martial law.

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